Monday, 27 July 2009

What inequalities commissioners really want

Ben Summerskill gives us a prolonged whine in the Times this morning to join the whining of the other equalities commissioners who have recently resigned. They are all complaining that Trevor Phillips isn't delivering what they're after. What they're after is, generally, public money and precedence.

The gay commissioner thinks his brief is more important than the commissioner for the old; the wimmin's commissioner thinks her silo is more important than that of the commissioner for black peoples. The disability commissioner thinks all of them are secondary to the rights of the disabled, whilst the lunatic commissioner points out that the mentally ill are found in all the other groups, and should therefore be pre-eminent.

David Green writes in the Telegraph that "Under the guise of demanding protection against discrimination, each victim group is in reality campaigning for privileges at the expense of everyone else." What they're actually campaigning for is not equality but inequality.

You can bet that there's one sector of charities that Suzi Leather won't be looking into, and that's the myriad of fake charities built around the equalities industry, bloated from tax funding.

Summerskill has carefully disguised his charity Stonewall's accounts to obscure the value of tax money coming into the organisation, but a skim of the public sectors funders published reports suggests that this is significant. Why isn't Summerskill prepared to be open and honest about exactly how much Stonewall gets from the public purse? What's to hide? The Terrence Higgins Trust is 80% funded by the taxpayer and the lottery - could it be that Summerskill fears Stonewall's credentials could be compromised if similar revelations suggested that it wasn't a real charity at all, but just the State in disguise?

Whilst these troughing 'charities' are each fighting for a bigger share of the tax cake, and Leather turns a blind eye to their questionnable charitable status, preferring instead to bully small private schools, they are also battling to gain dominance at the Inequalities Commission. Summerskill's whine today is just the latest episode in this little State drama.